Home Performance w/ ENERGY STAR Moving to DOE

The Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program for energy efficient whole-home residential retrofits that has resided at U.S. EPA since its inception is moving to U.S. DOE. As EPA funding come increasingly under attack by Congress, it is believed the move is being made so more resources will be available to the growing program. Home Performance with ENERGY STAR is hosting a stakeholder meeting on April 13 in Washington, DC to review the move and transition in more detail with stakeholders. For the formal release about the transition, click here.

Energy Bill Dead for Time Being

Senate leadership pulled the Energy Bill from the Senate schedule this week meaning that oil spill policy and Home Star will have to wait until September at best to be addressed.

ACCA Sends Excellent Letter to Senate re Home Star

Hats off to ACCA. This is an excellent letter they sent to all members of Senate outlining in great detail what they see as essential for actually making Home Star work.

NATE/SNIPS Article Misreads HOME STAR Tea Leaves

HARDI just posted an alert on our website responding to this SNIPS article promoting the benefits of the potential HOME STAR bill for NATE Certified technicians. NATE certifications are fantastic and HARDI and our members work hard each day to get more HVACR technicians certified, but understand that the current HOME STAR bill still needs significant improvements to truly benefit NATE certified technicians and their contractor firms. If enacted in its current form, over a third of the requested $6 bil in funding would NOT be available to the vast majority of NATE certified professionals. HARDI would love to see a simple, widely accessible, and immediate rebate incentive programs for high-efficiency retrofits, but right now HOME STAR meets none of those criteria.

ACCA and Others Seek Improvements to Home Star

According to ACCA's official release, the HVACR contractor association has joined with the Green Mechanical Council, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association, the National Roofing Contractors Association, and the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors National Association on a letter to the Senate urging two primary improvements to the latest "Home Star" bill:

1. Redirect the rebates to homeowners rather that to contractors
2. Open up "Gold Star" and the parallel 25E tax credit to more than BPI Accredited contractors

The bill faced signficant challenges prior to the concerns raised by these six influential organizations. Whether these changes are made might not matter since there continues to be little agreement on how to pay for the $6 billion program. HARDI agrees that opening up the contractor eligibility is essential for passage of the bill, however passage of an unappropriated Home Star could be far more disruptive and costly on the industry than no passage at all.

WSJ Discusses Federal Energy Efficiency Incentives

Thanks to ACHR News for Tweeting this WSJ article. In it, the WSJ talks about the growing movement to extend the 25c residential tax credits, and how they might interact with the Home Star proposal. As I've discussed before, Washington's appetite/political will for new spending measures has all but dried up so Home Star faces a stiff challenge. Extending 25c may just been the path of least resistance if the right vehicle for doing so can be identified.

Gridlock, Deficits, and an Election Year

I spent much of last week on policy issues trying to poke holes in my own assertions that Washington has all but shut down already for the rest of the year as it pertains to major legislation such as energy/climate, financial reform, and tax policy. Unfortunately I'm now back in Columbus with little evidence to the contrary. Today's piece in The Politico reinforces the Senate's lack of appitite for any more monster initiatives and spending. The key challenge is that there are plenty of smaller, inexpensive or non-spending measure bills out there that could pass, but leadership's insistence on packaging these items into massive, monster-bills with ever-ballooning price tags seems likely to submarine several good ideas. All that being said, I also left D.C. wary of what we might see come up during the Senate's "lame-duck" session after the November elections. These are always unpredictable sessions, and there could be several key Senators no longer with constituencies to worry about pleasing with these votes.

Chances of Federal Energy Efficiency Spending Shrinking

Political will even among rank-and-file House Democrats to support new spending measures is waning. This raises serious concerns that energy efficiency proposals such as Home Star, Building Star, or extension of the 25c tax credits will make any progress in 2010.

Another Home Star Version Intro'd in Senate

S.3434, roughly similar to S.3177 introduced earlier this year, was introduced in the Senate yesterday by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (NM) and was reported to the Senate Finance Committee where it's future is uncertain. Unfortunately this new bill did not include the Accredited Contractor amendment HARDI helped get into the House-passed bill last month, and the bill has no pay-for. ACCA's blog provides a nice overview of the bill here.

HARDI Sets Record During 2010 Congressional Fly-In

161 meetings with legislators in about 8 hours. Growing every year, HARDI's third Congressional Fly-In held last week in Washington had over fifty members all over the Capitol advocating for an extension of the residential energy efficiency tax credits, passage of an improved Home Star bill, and long term estate tax relief and certainty, among other things.

Home Star Passes House, But Raises More Questions

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed by a 264-161 vote a significantly altered H.R. 5019, Home Star Retrofit Act of 2010. The bill was on-course to be passed with an important amendment proposed by South Dakota Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin in close coordination with HARDI that would make it significantly easier and faster for experienced, qualified contractors to offer Gold Star home performance retrofit rebates. The bill did pass with this important amendment, however through a procedural move called a Motion to Recommit, Republicans were able to introduce substantial changes to the bill that won massive support because they included a funding mandate, a prohibition on the use of contractors who hire sex offenders, and restrictions on the use of administrative funds for travel to gambling institutions.

Two other important changes were first a cap on homeowners who can claim Home Star rebates at households making less than $250,000/yr and a redirecting of Home Star rebates directly to homeowners, rather to contractors and retailers as originally designed. This is perhaps the most substantive change because it raises new questions about how Home Star may be deployed. The Senate already has a bill, S.3177, which looks very similar to the original House Home Star bill, but it's fate seems even more uncertain now after what took place in the House yesterday.

HARDI Calls on House to Pass Improved Home Star Bill

HARDI sent this letter to all House of Representatives’ offices last night urging passage of an amended H.R. 5019, The Home Star Retrofit Act of 2010. Earlier this week HARDI had circulated throughout the House two significant concerns with the legislation which the association believe unnecessarily restricted contractor access to Home Star’s $6 billion in residential energy efficiency retrofit funding. HARDI was able to work with key members of Congress to get an amendment to the bill included in a package of amendments that will be voted on today along with the bill in its entirety. The primary amendment presented by Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin of South Dakota will require the U.S. Department of Energy to review and approve alternative proposals to BPI Accreditation to enable qualified contractors to offer Gold Star, home performance retrofits. Should this important legislation pass the House today, the bill would move to the Senate where HARDI is confident it can continue to work with key stakeholders and legislators to iron out minor remaining concerns.